There’s “no question that there was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic, fundamental democratic processes,” Cheney said. “In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war.”

U.S. intelligence determined that hacking operations into emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman were orchestrated by Putin in a bid to sway the election toward Donald Trump.

Despite the hacking, “there’s not any argument at this stage that somehow the election of President Trump was not legitimate,” emphasized Cheney, who said he was “happy” to be a Trump supporter (though Cheney said his election was a “surprise to nearly everybody”). But the Republican also clearly distanced himself from Trump’s often positive assessments of Putin.